Aeron River (Afon Aeron) Pilgrimage

Aeron River Pilgrimage – 24 miles, 2 days

The Afon Aeron is a small river in Ceredigion, west Wales, that rises on the moorland of Mynydd Bach and flows into Cardigan Bay at Aberaeron. Its name carries three meanings. From the Middle Welsh aer comes "battle" or "slaughter" – Aeron is thought to have been a Welsh god of war. In his Dictionary of the Welsh Language, William Owen Pughe translated it as "queen of brightness". And aeron in everyday Welsh simply means berries, fruit, or grain, i.e. harvest.

This source-to-sea journey follows the river through the full arc of its life. A river is a natural metaphor for birth to death: the clear, sparkling spring is like the bright eye of a newborn; tributaries along the way are like the teachers and influences that shape us; and the wide estuary, where the Aeron dissolves into Cardigan Bay, is like the death of the river opening into the oneness of the ocean.

The route takes in the source lake at Llyn Eiddwen National Nature Reserve, the Poets of Mynydd Bach Monument above Trefenter, Bontnewydd Church, the Ffynnon Geitho valley and Nant Cadwyn path, and Llangeitho – the heartland of Daniel Rowland and the 18th-century Welsh Methodist Revival. It passes Capel Betws Lleucu, Bwlchwernen Fawr (Holden Dairy Farm, Wales's oldest organic dairy and a Sustainable Food Trust Beacon Farm, with beds for pilgrims), Llwyn-y-groes and Gartheli churches, Llwyn Madog, Abermeurig, Trefilan Church with its medieval castle mound, and Plas Gelli at Tal-sarn, the wartime home of Dylan Thomas, who called the Aeron valley "the most precious place in the world". It then descends through Blaencamel Organic Farm, the National Trust estate of Llanerchaeron (John Nash's Georgian villa of 1795), Pont Newydd, and Aberaeron's Holy Trinity Church, ending at the harbour and the mouth of the river.

Low-cost accommodation along the route at Cilcennin; Bwlchwernen Fawr, and across region.